one thing for sure.. that shit looks baaaad
I don't live in a great state for 'self-defense' or castle laws or anything (I'm prepping a metaphor here). Some states note that it is not self-defense if the person is not a threat at the time. Fuck, an armed burglar could have broken into your house and threatened you, but if you're armed and ready to defend yourself, if it's found that you shot them
in the back because they were running away or trying to flee the scene, you can expect at least a hard time making that case, if not actually being convicted.
I also know that American culture, and Hollywood, have really ingrained a 'revenge porn' mentality into a lot of people, with a lot of "I
wish someone would" kind of attitudes, and it's easy to forget that retaliation isn't 'self defense.' Now I'm not gonna sit here and pretend that domestic disputes aren't extremely common, and I know that both are at fault for escalation, that both asked it to be dropped basically, and that, on the wide scale of domestic assaults, this is on the very bottom end of the spectrum. However, if we were to strictly go by the book: His initial contact with her is assault (a lot of stuff is. People often get assault mixed up with battery, but it really just means someone has put you in reasonable and immediate fear of harm, so poking someone in the chest during an argument is assault). So while her slapping him while pulling away can also be argued as assault, it can also be defended as self-defense. However, he (still in some manner of control of the situation as he's still holding onto her) has a harder time arguing that his slap is self defense and not retaliation because he's the one trying to prevent her from leaving during his own argued assault (he can be hit with attempt to cause harm, like an aggravated assault, but it doesn't appear as if it's significant enough to go into battery charges, but hey, I'm not a prosecutor). It especially doesn't help his case that he
continued to attack her, a surefire way of destroying any sort of self defense argument you want to make.
But again. Domestic issue, so it would be handled with a pretty different set of gloves if it was in front of a judge, and doesn't register very high in the grand scale of attacks in the first place. Charge alone? Probably wouldn't even get minimum time on probation for this. At worst, looking like a protective order if she asked for it, which a violation of could put him in some hot water, but that would only be if she pursued it, which it seems like she's not doing.
Only question after that is court of public opinion, so.. have at it everyone.
Or just ignore everything I said. This is just my take on the situation, but I'm only here as a troll, because everything above is just so obviously false according to the video.